


Perfect Instrument

by Truth



Category: The Phantom of the Opera (book or movie or musical)
Genre: F/M, Murder, Stalking, Violence, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Memoriam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was the perfect instrument, and would bring his music to the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect Instrument

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Memoriam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memoriam/gifts).



> This is fanfiction for the 1989 Phantom of the Opera horror film starring Robert Englund. If the names and the situation seem unfamiliar to you, it is because the movie is more or less an alternate universe version of the more familiar and original story.

  


## Perfect Instrument

  
Fandom: [The Phantom of the Opera (book or movie or musical)](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=The%20Phantom%20of%20the%20Opera%20\(book%20or%20movie%20or%20musical\))

  
Written for: Memoriam in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge

by [Truth](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=55/perfectinstrument)  


No one truly understood.

That was the reality of Hell, he'd decided, that which made one truly damned. He had the most beautiful composition in the world beneath his hands, moving through his veins with every beat of his heart, ringing in his dreams... and there was no one who could _hear_ that music or touch it or even know it was there.

It was maddening.

From the dank and stinking tunnels beneath the London opera house to a light and airy penthouse and still, everything was _empty_. He waited and he worked and he strove - without result and without satisfaction.

She had been beneath his hands, her pulse against his gloved fingers and pounding hard enough that he could feel the music there... and she had rejected it - rejected _him_ , and it was enough to cause him to take the glass in his hand and hurl it across the room, watching it shatter into a hundred glittering pieces and wanting to drive each one into the body of....

The ringing of his phone distracted him and he moved to answer. "Foster here."

Distraction, voices writing themselves over the top of the eternal music, helped to keep the rage and frustration at bay. He'd learned that early on. Voices or the warm, anonymous embrace of a willing body - something harder to find in these days of bright lights and greater caution.

Becoming a _producer_ , someone who demanded respect and who needed to constantly be available, with all the facts and figures at his fingertips, had been the greatest possible distraction thus far. It had taken time and money - but money was something he had never had difficulty with.

After _her_ , he'd been forced to move up into the more direct light of day. As the years passed, he'd converted his gold, learned the magic of becoming an investor and never looked back. Every ten years he'd change his name, move his money and begin again. Money sometimes slipped through his fingers, but he always made it back in the end.

Erik had a great deal of patience, when it came to most things. The music would never die and as long as it played, neither would he.

"I'm not interested in your thoughts on casting." He was rarely interested in the thoughts of others. They interfered with the music, beyond distraction to irritation. Erik stared down at the city, spread out beneath him, and still was not satisfied. "There will be an open call for the entire cast. See to it."

His Christine was out there, with her ability to hear his music, to know the soaring notes before they ever left his pen. She _knew_... and he would force her to understand. She would bring his music to the world and then, all would be perfect. He would have his compositions in flesh, moving beneath his hands as a living thing, and she would _love_ him.

Abandoning the phone beside the window, he moved back to the small room he used for his composing. Technology had been kind to him, furthering his aims at every turn - and not just in terms of musical composition. How pleased he'd been to discover that most marvelous of inventions, the latex prosthesis. The glue hurt his raw and bleeding skin, though not as badly as his earlier attempts at the stitching of dead flesh and application of thick greasepaint. It was a pain he could bear, and far less than many of the other things which had been done to his body.

He walked in the daylight, now. Respected, admired... he'd been able to sell some of his other, smaller works under the name of Foster, things he'd written before the music in his soul had been ripped free to drown out the sound of every other composition. It had helped his reputation a great deal over the past few years, but he was running out of pieces and with his greatest, most terrible music running through his veins, he would never be able to compose another piece of music.

The time had come. _His_ time. Don Juan Triumphant would soon open to an audience that would be enveloped in the soaring glory of his composition and the _world_ would hear his music and carry it to immortality. It made heat sing through his body, pulsing with the promise of freedom, of eternity... of the ability to compose again.

And Christine, his Christine, would be the vehicle that would carry his triumph to the world!

He leaned against the stand which held the keyboards that he used to produce the weak, secondary notes from which he constructed his opus. He remembered the feel of her body beneath him and the sound, the glorious sound of her voice. That was the instrument on which he needed to play his music. No other would do.

She was out there. She was out there, waiting for him. This time he would have her, this time she would sing for him, this time she wouldn't fight him.... Not that it mattered. He'd have his music from her one way or the other.

Erik left his music room, and the term when applied to a place of cold technology made him smile - not a pleasant expression even with a face that looked so much like the one he'd lost. His favorite place in his new lair was before the giant window that looked down on the city. He could see the miracles that had been wrought since he'd lost his soul, see the dirt and the filth that stained those wonders even more clearly. The world had changed, but people remained the same.

He'd touch those people, in their world stained by false noise. He'd reach through their televisions and their car radios, he'd steal into their theatres and their concert stages. He would stand Christine before the world and watch them fall down before her - his perfect vessel....

The open call was a sore point between himself and the director, but Erik held the strings and Erik's word was law. The lead would remain uncast until Christine appeared, and appear she would.

The music would bring her to him... and she would never leave again.  


   
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